NeuroNames

Abstract: In order to meet the need for a controlled terminology in neuroinformatics, we have integrated the extensive terminology of NeuroNames into the Foundational Model of anatomy. We illustrate the application of foundational principles for the establishment of an inheritance hierarchy, which accommodates anatomical attributes of neuroanatomical concepts and provides the foundation to which other information may be linked.

Abstract: The insufficiency of terminological standards in neuroscience is increasingly recognized as a serious obstacle to interoperability. Adoption of a controlled vocabulary is a successful solution for small numbers of groups that work closely together but is impractical for large numbers of groups who represent diverse areas of research, index information by various legitimate nomenclatures, or publish in different languages. Interoperability among such disparate databases requires a translation mechanism, or "mediator," to enable communication and data sharing among databases. Shared ontologies are essential components of a mediator. An ontology codifies the relations between terms of multiple nomenclatures and the concepts they represent. Neuroanatomy is central to neuroscience, and neuroanatomical terminology represents a core portion of the vocabulary of neuroscience. We have created in NeuroNames an ontology of 2500 neuroanatomical concepts referenced by 15,000 terms in seven languages. NeuroNames is the mediator for BrainInfo, a portal to neuroanatomy on the Web. We hope that a description of our experience in establishing interoperability between BrainInfo and other neuroscience Web sites may be useful to others engaged in the development of ontologies for neuroscience.

Abstract: NeuroNames© is a comprehensive, hierarchical nomenclature of structures found in the human and nonhuman primate brain. NeuroNames software is operational on Macintosh® computers in the user-friendly Hypercard® environment. The design of NeuroNames encourages the user to explore the brain by making structure names, synonyms, relationships to other structures as well as species information and authoritative bibliographical sources, accessible by mouse button clicks. It is designed to serve as a teaching tool, as an entry point to computerized atlases and as an indexing tool to data bases created by modern brain imaging techniques.

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter describes a digital Rosetta stone for primate brain terminology. The functional unit of the nervous system at the cellular level is the neuron. At the histologic level it is the pathway—that is, a set of neurons with essentially identical neurochemical characteristics whose cell bodies are located in the same place and that project to the same places. Because functions are more directly related to pathways and circuits of pathways than to classical structures of the brain defined by the gray-white dichotomy, nomenclatures based on pathways and circuits aid thought and communication about brain mechanisms. NeuroNames and the Template Atlas represent an attempt to create a neuroanatomic Rosetta stone which provides one standard English name for each primary structure of a standard primate brain and an unambiguous spatial definition of that structure. A nomenclature of greater pragmatic validity might be achieved by a periodic word count from Society for Neuroscience Abstracts and representative neuroscience journals to determine which synonym for each of the primary structures of the brain has been used most commonly in the previous decade.